Live6 Alliance hires full-time leaders as part of plan to speed up Livernois-McNichols revitalization

Cecily King (left) is the new executive director of Live6 Alliance and Jeremy Lewis is commercial corridor manager.

Cecily King comes from city's Housing and Revitalization Department

Jeremy Lewis comes from Detroit Regional Chamber

Goal is to implement vision created during nonprofit's first 2 ½ years

For Live6 Alliance, the first 2 ½ years of existence have been about developing a vision to revitalize what was once a vibrant, bustling business district in northwest Detroit.

With the resurging Livernois "Avenue of Fashion" and newfound interest in nearby corridors from businesses and developers, the University of Detroit Mercy's economic engagement arm aims to shift from vision to implementation.

In its first major step of the transition, the nonprofit has hired a new executive director, Cecily King, and commercial corridor manager, Jeremy Lewis.

King, 30, started at the helm of the nonprofit officially this week after working with the city of Detroit in 2015-17 as development director of the Housing and Revitalization Department. Lewis, 32, comes from the Detroit Regional Chamber, where he was director of the National Commerce Group Business Development since 2015. He grew up in the Green Acres community and attended nearby University of Detroit Jesuit High School. After graduating from Hampton University in Virginia, he worked in advertising sales before returning to his hometown.

The two new hires make a total of four full-time employees at the nonprofit, plus Michael Forsyth, co-owner of Detroit City Distillery in Eastern Market and original member of the alliance who will serve as a consultant through the transition.

The shift to full-time executive leadership started in December after Live6 parted ways with Lauren Hood, who disagreed with the direction the nonprofit was taking.

Detroit Mercy President Antoine Garibaldi has a clear vision — one he said is shared by students, residents and community stakeholders and looks a lot like the Avenue of Fashion and adjoining corridors during their heyday.

Antoine Garibaldi

"We realized we did not want it to be all the same kinds of businesses and were looking for businesses that are diverse and are the kinds of businesses the neighbors might want," Garibaldi said. "You have a nice little main street and something of what Livernois used to be."

King, a native of New Jersey, completed her undergraduate degree at Princeton University, earned a master's degree of real estate development at Columbia University and a master's degree of structural engineering at Lehigh University. She moved to Detroit 2 ½ years ago because it was ripe for rebuilding and she had the skill set to help.

"I had had my eye on Detroit for a while," she said. "In the development world, there's such a cool story in that it's a historic city and a historically black city and I'm drawn to that."

Live6 caught wind of King's work in the city early on through projects such as the revitalization of the Fitzgerald neighborhood. The nonprofit began reaching out to her two years ago, so by the time she was ready to move on from the city she had a good idea of where she would land next.

Kwabena Shabu/City of Detroit

Maurice Cox, planning director for the city of Detroit, speaks outside the planned HomeBase community center at an October groundbreaking event for the revitalization of the Fitzgerald neighborhood in northwest Detroit.

"I left the city because it was time and I wanted to pursue my own development and entrepreneurship aspirations," King said. "The vision and business side of the table is where I want to live."

For at least the next few months, Forsyth is tasked with getting King and Lewis up to speed on all things revitalization in the neighborhood, which includes identifying what factors most threaten its recovery. One of the most glaring is lack of usable real estate. Many of the neighborhood's buildings are blighted and abandoned. The risk and investment required to activate aging infrastructure scares off many potential business owners.

"It's a supply side problem, not a demand problem," Forsyth said.

Convincing developers to invest in the neighborhood and helping property owners realize the potential of their real estate is key to transformation, he said. He remains optimistic and convinced that the business district already is an invaluable asset to the community.

"There is a bustling district here," he said. "The Avenue of Fashion used to be the Rodeo Drive of Detroit before the term 'mall' existed," he said. "In order to understand what's next, you always have to understand the past and there's a lot to build on here, and it's a very fortunate position to be in as a community development organization."

For her part, King intends to build off the work Live6 has done and take it in a more project-oriented direction.

"I'm in a great position to move things forward; it's not like I'm starting from scratch," she said. "I'm not the same person as the previous executive director and I want that to be very clear. I have my own relationships with this community. I'm looking forward to applying my skill set to really make some implementation inroads."